Club Members Await Trips To Ports Unknown

DENVER -- One of the most popular trips made by the nation`s largest travel club every year is the one where the passengers don`t know where they`re going.

Members of the Ports of Call club literally wait in line to plunk down $1,300 or so to reserve a spot on the club`s annual mystery trip. The club, headquartered in Denver, has 70,000 members from 45 states and six foreign countries.

The only guarantee they have is that the mystery trip`s destination is some place the club has never been before. The only hint they get is that they are told what kind of weather to expect so they can bring proper clothing.

After 25 mystery trips, it becomes increasingly more difficult to find new locations, says club President Larry Turrill.

The first mystery trip, in 1967, was to Santa Fe, N.M., for its annual fiesta. The cost was just $125 and the club barely filled one of its airplanes.

The destination for this year`s trip was much more exotic -- Abidjan, Ivory Coast -- and the cost much higher, $1,400. Still, 740 club members signed up in two days to take the trip, and four airplanes were used. There also was a waiting list of several hundred more members.

Ports of Call, founded as a non-profit, member-owned travel club in 1966, probably could take more than 1,000 people on the mystery trips. But it has to limit the size to four airplanes because few tourist destinations can handle groups much larger than 750. Even at that, Ports of Call makes its reservations two or three years in advance and runs the mystery trips in the spring or fall, when space is easier to find.

One club member, Sarah Bemis of Denver, has made every mystery trip. With one exception, the 61-year-old retired hospital worker has enjoyed every one. She has logged more than 200,000 miles with the club.

``I`ve always enjoyed the unknown,`` she says. ``And I know that the club has to plan more for you because you don`t know where you`re going.

``Before I joined the club, I hadn`t even been out of the country. I took that first mystery trip because it was the first trip that came up after I joined and the price seemed reasonable.``

For many club members, the mystery trips become a cat-and-mouse game, adding an extra element of suspense to their vacation. Some bring compasses and maps along, trying to figure out while they`re in the air where they`re going. That`s difficult, though, because of magnetic declination and varying air speeds.

Most of the travelers don`t know the destination until they arrive. Even then, some of the destinations aren`t so obvious. Turrill says the club never formally reveals the site, so it`s theoretically possible to return home without knowing precisely where you`ve been.

When the trips began, it was easy to pick a spot. After Santa Fe, they had a distinctly Mexican flavor, with tours to Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, Guadalajara and Juarez in 1968, `69 and `70. The only non-Mexico trip in those years was to Lake Geneva, Wis. That was when the club made two mystery tours a year, which it has stopped doing.

Bemis says her only bad experience was the 1976 trip to Padre Island, Texas. It rained most of the time and the hotel was so new it was unprepared.

Turrill agrees. He thought the experience was so bad that it might force the club to cancel future mystery trips. ``But one of the members came up to me on the plane coming home and said he wanted to sign up for the next mystery trip. He said he knew we couldn`t have such a bad trip twice.``

Bemis` most memorable trips were to Tenerife in 1984 and Paramaribo, Suriname, in 1974.

``Tenerife is such a beautiful place,`` she says. ``It was wonderful just to wander around, taking your time shopping and looking at the buildings and people.``

On the Suriname trip, the members took dugout canoes up the river to a native village, where the natives danced, walked on hot coals and performed a voodoo ceremony. They also took a trip on a train pulled by a wood-burning locomotive.

Since last fall, Ports of Call has been a commercial carrier so it can advertise and use its fleet of nine passenger jets more efficiently by taking charters.